East to the Dawn (39 page)

On Wednesday, June 13, it was overcast but at least clear of fog. Again Amelia, Bill, and Slim received a go-ahead from Doc Kimball. They rose at six and began their preparations. Again, gamely, they loaded on supplies, said their good-byes to the now few onlookers, and started out. They tried twice to take off that morning. The first time they taxied a full three miles without being able to lift off from the water before giving up. The second time they skimmed along the water for two miles, only to fail again. In the afternoon they taxied the Friendship to the head of the harbor, the extreme northeast corner, and, starting from there, tried four more times. Between runs, keeping all curious boats at a distance, apparently to keep the amount a secret from watching newsmen, they jettisoned gas. The frustrated newsmen, watching from afar, could not tell how much was taken off, but Amelia later wrote in her log that they took off three hundred gallons. Then yet again they tried and failed. To at least one spectator, it became clear that the plane just
didn't have the power—that the fault wasn't the engines, or the salt spray, or unfavorable winds: “the real fault in this case is with the ship itself.”

By the end of the afternoon, the left motor was cutting out, and while working on it close to shore, they suddenly found themselves stranded on a sandy ledge as the tide ran out. Luckily the wind had died down during day, so they finished repairing the motor and went ashore, returning at midnight, when high tide allowed them to float the
Friendship
off the ledge. Boll sent a taunting telegram suggesting that the
Friendship
come to Harbor Grace and that they start out from there at the same time.

Amelia was in charge of communications in Trepassey; George Putnam, installed at the
New York Times
office in Times Square in Manhattan, was in charge of the New York end. Desperate to get off, even if it meant flying to Europe in stages, Amelia had sent a cable to him there inquiring about refueling facilities in the Azores. Apparently after being informed that that was indeed possible, thoroughly discouraged by their plane's inability to carry as heavy a load as they had expected, they announced to the press that the Azores rather than Europe might have to be their goal.

Even the prospects of a partially successful flight were now uncertain. Theirs wouldn't be the first trimotored seaplane unable to take off for a transatlantic flight. That previous fall, a trimotored Junkers, a twelve-passenger plane reconfigured in the Junkers factory to accommodate the huge amount of fuel required for a transatlantic flight, carrying Viennese actress Lilli Dillenz and a crew of four, also equipped with Junkers pontoons, had, as the world waited on tenterhooks, tried unceasingly for two months to lift its load and was finally forced to abandon the effort. “The days grow worse,” Amelia wrote in the log. “... None of us are sleeping much any more.... I think each time we have reached the low but find we haven't.... We are on the ragged edge.” Amelia's cables were reflecting something more than her frustrations, for suddenly David Layman, worried, wired Amelia, PLEASE SEND PUTNAM CONFIDENTIAL REPORT WHAT GOES ON ARE YOU SATISFIED THERE CAN WE HELP MORE THERE OR HERE.

The problem was Bill Stultz's drinking. That previous fall he had been through a protracted, dangerous, and frustrating effort to fly Frances Wilson Grayson across the Atlantic. Now he was involved with what looked like another problem plane that might never make it, and sitting at a nearby airfield was the
Columbia,
the proven plane he knew so well, the plane he had flown to Havana. He suddenly looked and felt like a bit of a fool. Newspaper articles had referred to him initially as Grayson and Boll's
pilot.
(Herald Tribune
headlines first identified him as “Mrs. Grayson's Ex-Pilot.”) Because of Boll's sobbing calls to the newspapers, everyone the world over knew he had dumped her for Amelia. To make matters worse, his ex-client and flying companion on the Havana trip was now publicly taunting him. As the days stretched out in Trepassey and the
Friendship's
prospects became increasingly dim, it began to look as if he had made the wrong choice. Alcohol was his friend even in the best of times, but it was his refuge in bad. The first time Hilton Railey ever laid eyes on him—that night at the Copley Plaza, when he had spilled the beans about the flight—he had been drunk; or as Hilton delicately put it, “tight and talkative.”

Amelia later told George Putnam she had become so worried about Bill's condition that she came very close to wiring him and Layman to replace Stultz—possibly with Lou Gower, the pilot who had been forced to disembark when they had started out in Boston. Her motives in not doing so were mixed. For one thing, she didn't know her backers very well. She couldn't be sure that Putnam and Layman would believe and trust her; she was afraid their response might be to call off the whole enterprise—expensive and costing more with each passing day—what with the costs of the plane, the daily weather reports, for which they were paying the Weather Bureau, Hilton Railey's expenses in London, the daily expenses of the three of them in Trepassey, the endless cables back and forth: “How could she know that we'd not simply think that here was a girl whose inexperience had caught up with her, or whose courage had failed.” Amelia had another reason—she knew that if she fired Stultz, she would irrevocably ruin his career; she didn't want to be the cause of that.

Amelia was certainly not without experience with drinkers; she had had ample time to observe that even during her father's drinking stretches, there were intervals when he was sober and able to function perfectly well. Now, she had no doubt of Bill's abilities when he was sober; he had done an excellent job bringing them to Trepassey. She was banking that once airborne, once absorbed in the flight, seated in the finite, controllable space that constituted the interior of an airplane, he would be constrained by his environment and his training would take over. She resolved to stick with Stultz—to keep him sober and see it through.

While Amelia and Slim and Bill were desperately and repeatedly trying to take off in the
Friendship,
Mabel spent the day resting at her hotel. The
Columbia,
meanwhile, surrounded by curious townsfolk at the airfield built the summer before on the high plateau above the town of Harbor Grace to the northeast of them, was being carefully checked out by its crew. In the evening Mabel attended a reception given in her honor by
the Knights of Columbus. During the reception, which was followed by dinner and a dance, she was eulogized by local dignitaries. If Amelia, Bill, and Slim were spared the details, they certainly knew that the
Columbia
and her crew were ready and waiting. The
Columbia
crew, for its part, was getting hourly updates on the
Friendship.
Mabel, informed that her rival had abandoned plans to fly to Europe direct, smiled and announced her new goal: Italy. And as the day turned into the uncertain twilight that is the night in those northern climes in June, it became Thursday, June 14.

The wind that greeted the fliers that morning in Trepassey was north northeast. In the balmy 65-degree air the morning fog, earlier so thick it kept a large number of schooners bound in port, finally cleared out, and it turned into a fine, fresh day. The weather in Europe, however, was extremely bad. The worst was in Paris, where storms caused four planes to crash. The big event of the day, of which there is no mention in Amelia's log, was that her companions went for a test flight without her, probably the only time such a thing happened, and that it was successful. Aboard they had some six hundred gallons of gasoline, just a partial load, and a male stand-in for her. According to observers who watched the plane, the Friendship taxied and took off “almost immediately” with its lightened gas load, and flew for thirty-four minutes. It was the first time since it landed at Trepassey that the
Friendship
was actually airborne. The radio kicked up again, and Bill was unable to raise nearby Cape Race—but still, they were all so elated, they announced they were rejecting the Azores as their goal; their destination would be Ireland. Now, again eagerly, they waited for Kimball to tell them they could start. But when the cable came it was bad news.

Kimball reported a storm off the Irish coast; neither the
Columbia
nor the Friendship could start. Nevertheless the Trepassey fliers, buoyed by the Friendship's successful flight the day before, attacked that Friday with optimism. They digested the news in the flying world: Belgium was offering $30,000 for the first airman flying New York to Ostend; a Swedish geologist was planning a flight following the Viking route-Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, and Canada; the Canadian National Railway was naming its four new stations after four fliers—Fitzmaurice, Lindbergh, Alcock, and Hinchcliffe—and would name the next one Endeavor, to honor Elsie Mackay. The
Southern
Cross had successfully flown the Pacific. The big monoplane had started out from Oakland field, San Francisco, May 31, a few days before the Friendship left Boston and, with stops at Honolulu and Fiji, had landed in Brisbane, Australia, covering the
7,800 miles in an elapsed flying time of 83 hours and 38 minutes—the first time the Pacific had been bridged. The
Friendship
crew were happy that their confreres had safely flown halfway around the globe, but they also felt a twinge of frustration—the
Southern Cross
was a Fokker F7 with Wright Whirlwind engines—“practically identical with the
Friendship
except that she was not equipped with pontoons,” Amelia noted. And the
Southern
Cross had had no problems taking off, even though she carried more fuel than the
Friendship
(they considered 880 gallons of fuel a “light load”) plus
four in crew.
Still, they had made it, and, as Amelia wrote later, “so could we. Their accomplishment was a challenge.”

They had a musical evening. Stultz and Andy Fulgoni played “Jingle Bells” on the guitar harp. Observed Amelia, “Two are required for the feat and I am terribly amused.” Perhaps part of her amusement was relief that at least one of her rivals appeared stopped—Thea Rasche was having problems over the ownership of her Bellanca and was reportedly forced to abandon her attempt at a transatlantic flight.

Mabel Boll spent the day at her usual pursuits, dining and shopping. She went to a luncheon in St. John's given by the colonial secretary, Sir John Bennett, bought herself a “beautiful” Labrador silver fox fur, and went on a tour of the city.

On Saturday there was a slight west wind in Trepassey, and although it was warm, it was as usual overcast; flying conditions over the Atlantic were still bad. At Amelia's urging, even though the wind was freshening, the
Friendship
was reloaded with some of the gasoline taken off. All told, 120 gallons were put back. The weather report from Kimball was that there was a storm center slightly to the south of their route, moving east; the midocean areas were still troubled. Still, he gave them a conditional okay to start the next day. Amelia went to bed without making any entry in her log—highly unusual, the only day not accounted for. It was just too painful, for as she later told George Putnam, Bill Stultz spent the day drinking heavily.

By Sunday, June 17, it was clear, and the wind was a brisk twenty knots at nine A.M., coming from the west. The remaining gas was loaded, packaged as usual in the five-gallon cans that could be dumped out as needed to lighten the plane. As George Putnam later recounted, Amelia had made up her mind—they had to go that day if they wanted to beat the
Columbia
across. Never mind that Bill was suffering a hangover and didn't like the weather; never mind that the weather over the Atlantic was at best borderline. As the person whom George Putnam and David Layman had
put in charge, Amelia had the authority to force the issue; she also had the moral strength. Amelia was sure that once airborne, Bill's instinct and ability would come to the fore, and he would act like the professional he was. George Putnam would later call her decision “either the bravest or the silliest act of her whole career.” There was no doubt that Bill Stultz did not want to go; four men, Burnham Gill, the son of the town magistrate, stringer for the Associated Press; Joey Smallwood of
The Evening Telegram;
Frederick Ryan of
The New York Times;
and Andy Fulgoni, of Paramount News, watched Amelia, dressed in breeks, boots, and leather coat, carrying knapsack and camera, coerce Bill into the dory and out to the plane. To all four of them, Amelia appeared firmly in control, which didn't make them worry any the less. Burnham watched Amelia and Bill at ten A.M. arguing as they walked along the rocky beach. Smallwood approached them to talk to them and reported Amelia as saying, “We have a dandy breeze behind us and we are going in spite of everything.” “Stultz,” he added, “appeared worried and agitated.” He said that if they came down in a heavy sea, they would not “live a minute.” Ryan was also on the scene. “Miss Earhart said the wind was favorable and she was confident of success. ‘We are going today in spite of everything,' ” he reported. To Andy Fulgoni, snapping pictures, Amelia repeated what she had said: “We're going today, and we're going to make it.” Andy, being a photographer and therefore a skilled observer, thought Stultz “precariously nervous”—and not sober. One could only hope for the best, he decided.